Due to the increasing popularity and acceptance of the computer and mobile devices, more and more financial transactions between merchants and customers are being conducted electronically. Many merchants have started to provide their customers with receipts electronically to maintain record of the financial transactions. For example, some merchants may provide a receipt through delivery of an electronic mail (i.e., e-mail). In another example, some merchants may make the receipt available through an online customer account on a merchant website. Various solutions are currently available to provide such receipt electronically, such as building an internal solution specific to a merchant's point of sale (POS) system or integrating with a third party solution into the merchant's POS.
The existing receipt solutions, however, are often limited in functionality and present many issues for both merchants and customers. For a customer, the receipts from the different merchants often get delivered in different ways (e.g., format, delivery method, etc.), and as such the customer is unable to manage the receipts digitally. For a merchant, a highly customized infrastructure change to existing POS system is needed in order to have a receipt solution that fits the merchant's needs; the merchant may not be ready to make such changes based on the business size, the cost, and/or the required technical knowledge. Further, the efforts required for such changes do not translate well in terms of a return on investment; the existing digital receipt solutions merely provide a record for the transactions, and nothing more.
Accordingly, a more robust, versatile system for providing a receipt electronically is needed.